RUSH: Hell's a-poppin' out there. Hell is a-poppin', folks. All kinds of things are happening right now as the program begins.

Fox News is reporting that the Obama administration is going to say "no" to the Keystone pipeline. The State Department is gonna say "no." They're gonna allow the Canadians to reapply with a new route that will not upset the precious habitat of Nebraska. Now, the prime minister of Canada said yesterday, I'm paraphrasing, "You Americans are absolutely nuts. If you want to treat your whole country like an off-limits National Park you go right ahead, but you can't make us treat our country that way. And if we have to we'll run a pipeline to the ChiComs. We're gonna move this oil."

So here we have election-year politics. Barack Obama has signaled to his base that there's gonna be some budget cuts coming that they won't like. 'Cause he's gonna submit a budget and it's gonna contain ostensibly cuts in it that his base won't like. Of course there won't be any cuts in an Obama budget that is presented.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Don't worry. I have all of this under control. 'Cause if I don't, nobody else does, or will. And I've always told you when it would be time to panic, and it's not time to panic yet. Nowhere near it. While all this stuff's going on in the Republican side, ABC/Washington Post has a poll, the American people's confidence on the economy is still falling. I don't care how often Obama tries to blame that on Bush, it isn't gonna fly. There is nothing Obama can run on in the last three years that he can say, "Give me another four years to do more of this." There's nothing he can cite. There's not one thing that has happened in these past three years that Obama can run on.

They're gonna turn down the Keystone pipeline, that's the news. Fox has it out there. The State Department's gonna officially reject it because the route that the pipeline takes goes through the lovely pristine wilds of Nebraska. It would upset everything if it broke, which doesn't happen to pipelines, blah, blah, blah. Now, let me tell you something about this. This is very, very simple, and there have been worldwide surveys on this. This is not my opinion. This is economic fact. One of the primary ingredients, mechanisms, if you will, in lifting people economically is access to affordable, plentiful, cheap energy. In fact, there's a good ol' boy from Georgia who said recently -- I've got it in the stack here -- there's something everybody's missing here about what happened to the Chinese communists, and one of the reasons that they're never gonna be able now to hold onto communism is just two words: air-conditioning.

Once the Mainland Chinese discovered what they had in Hong Kong, they wanted it for themselves. And now the Chinese are expanding their electronic grid, so is India, they are bringing affordable and relatively cheap, market price, energy to their people. Electricity and the availability of electricity is one of the most crucial elements of freedom, economic advancement. The denial of this pipeline is the denial of access to more domestic energy that would lessen our dependence on foreign sources. It would make our overall supply greater, thereby lowering prices. It is a win-win that this administration is rejecting. And they are rejecting it on environmental grounds. That's the public position on this.

Now, I'm here to tell you what the plan is. The plan is to reject this during the campaign. Obama is in trouble. He needs to secure his base. He needs to hold onto the wackos in the Democrat Party base, and he needs to keep their campaign contributions flowing. I'm frankly surprised that they've announced their decision this soon on this. I thought they'd try to keep this going as long as they could, extend it to get campaign donations coming from both sides of it, the oil business side and the environmentalist wacko side. They've obviously made a political calculation that it's more important to secure the base right now because they're in trouble. I don't care what's going on on the Republican side. They claim that the Republican campaign, the nominee, the campaign's gonna be about the Republican nominee. It's going to be about Obama.

This election is going to be about Barack Obama. He is the steward of a declining economy that an ABC News/Washington Post poll tells us that more and more people are feeling more and more negative about. Nobody wants to live in a nation in decline. Nobody wants to live in a nation in decline on purpose. Well, I don't want to say nobody, but we're not to the point where the majority of Americans want to live in a plundered, failed, downturned economy forever. That's not what most people want. Obama right now cannot afford for this pipeline to be approved because it would provide glaring evidence of all the errors he's made the previous three years. He simply can't do it. This pipeline, approving it, bringing more energy into this country, would be a great benefit to this country.

The moment this deal were to be announced it would have immediate effects on people's confidence. In the business sector, people who plan ahead, it would be demonstrable. Can't afford for that to happen because it would shine the light on all the failures of this regime in the three previous years, plus it would totally blow up his base. Can't have that. So what's going to happen? This will be resubmitted, if Obama wins, in 2013, and it will be miraculously approved. But right now it is purely and simply a campaign issue. Well, jobs was, too. But as far as the jobs are concerned, Obama is hoping just the appearance of interest in creating jobs will be enough to convince people he's doing something about it. But jobs, at minimum 20,000. Over the long haul hundreds of thousands of jobs would be created as a result of the Keystone pipeline. None of it matters. None of the reality matters. That's where we are.

I think donations from the environmentalist wackos must be down. I'm guessing here, but I'm just assuming that the money coming in from the wacko side is not what they thought. I think they're lagging behind. I think that's what this indicates. 'Cause right now everything Obama's doing is oriented toward money. And it always is, about everything. But now it's specifically campaign money and reelection money, and so forth. The calculation is that if you don't have your base you don't have a chance. If your base loses energy, if your base is demoralized, if your base is mad at you and the proverbial threats to stay home pop up, then you have no prayer. No matter the fraud, no matter the cheating, no matter how much walking around street money you've got, if you lose your base... frankly, the Republican Party runs this risk every four years. They purposely irritate the base.

I think Obama is probably losing his. On the Keystone pipeline, the unions are on both sides of it, too. Unions are on both sides. Some union people don't want the pipeline, others do, because it's jobs. And so the union donations on the anti-pipeline side are not automatic. They're not gonna go to Republicans, but they don't have to give. There's a lot of single-issue constituencies on the Democrat -- part of their coalition, a lot of single-issue constituencies, and they're just like our side. If they're not satisfied, they'll get all humpty-hump and sit around and not participate, and threaten not to participate. Wall Street Journal: Seven charged in insider trading probe including some of Wall Street's biggest money managers. That's a guaranteed campaign show trial. Wall Street on trial. We can all see how this is going to shake down. (interruption) It's not illegal. They can do insider trading, yeah, there's no proscription against them.

You heard about the Occupy DC throwing a couple of smoke bombs over the White House fence yesterday. Remember when the Tea Party used to do that all the time? No. No. I don't, either. I don't know why these protesters even bother to go to the White House. Don't they realize it's already occupied? They don't need to occupy the White House. They have it. I still love what the prime minister of Canada said. (paraphrasing) "Hey, look, you know, you guys, you want to treat your country like a giant national park, it's off-limits to everybody, you go right ahead. But we don't look at our country that way and we're gonna pipe this oil somewhere, and if we have to send it to the ChiComs, we will do it."

This is from TheHill.com: "Top White House officials are warning liberal and labor leaders to brace themselves for President Obama’s budget proposal. Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, sought in meetings last week to lift the left’s gloom about Washington’s crackdown on spending by promising that the president this year will focus on job creation rather than deficit cutting." How many times now have we been promised a laser-like focus on job creation by this president? What is this, the ninth or tenth time now? "Obama staffers sought to present their budget plan as a glass half full. According to sources familiar with the briefings, they promised that the president will focus on jobs and the economy, instead of deficit-cutting, which dominated last year’s debate on Capitol Hill." Now, the translation of that is that Obama is going to push for spending, stimulus, instead of cutting spending.

So what is there for labor unions and the rest of the left not to like? What is this? You won't like the budget? I think what's really going on here is that the regime is warning the left that they're going to have to offer a budget that sounds like there are cuts, but they don't want them to have to worry since there really won't be any cuts. Do any of us really think Obama or any Democrat's gonna present a budget with cuts? I mean real cuts? It isn't gonna happen. But now that Obama's laid it out, "Hey, get ready, we're gonna have to really cut this budget." And the media will carry that along, but there won't be any cuts. We are coming up on the 1,000th day without a budget. The 1,000th day that the Democrat Party has not offered or presented a budget.

But this article from The Hill repeats several times that Obama is gonna focus on jobs and the economy instead of deficit cutting, never mind the deal he made back in August to get the debt ceiling raised. So what he's really doing here, just to translate this for you again, Obama is telling his base he's gonna push for more spending, more stimulus, instead of cutting spending. He's telling the labor unions and the rest of his foot soldiers he's still gonna find ways to funnel them money, despite the supposed spending cuts. When he tells them he's gonna focus on jobs, the translation: "I'm sending you money." That's what it means. "Don't worry about the cuts in here, don't worry about whatever appear to be cuts. I'm focusing on jobs." And every time Obama focuses on jobs, that means stimulus. Jobs equals federal spending, according to Obama. And that's the message he's sending to his troops here.